China's State Council has finally given its nod to the issuance of the long-awaited 3G licenses.

According to a recent news report by Xinhua News Agency, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will award three licenses to mobile operators in early 2009 without specifying an exact date. While China Mobile will provide 3G service via home-grown TD-SCDMA network, China Unicom and China Telecom will rely on WCDMA and CDMA 2000 respectively, the report said.

China will invest RMB 280 billion (US$ 41 billion) in 3G networks over the next two years, Li Yizhong, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was quoted as saying.

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